Pedro Berliner
Professeur émerite, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research | Israël | Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Prof Emeritus Pedro Berliner, a member of the Wyler Department of Dryland Agriculture, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Berliner’s main research interest is the efficient use of water in rainfed agricultural systems and planted forests in drylands. He has studied and developed the techniques that make use of flood waters for the irrigation of orchards and forests planted in arid zones, with a focus on the evaporation of water from the surface of bare soils and between the rows of crops. He is involved in the development, testing and modeling of agricultural techniques that increase the water use efficiency of crops and planted forests. The results of these studies have been published in leading scientific journals and he has served as a referee for numerous scientific journals and funding agencies. In addition to BGU, he has held a research post in South Africa and was a visiting professor in Spain, Japan and Mexico and was the Director of the Blaustein Institutes from 2010 to 2014. He is currently Israel’s Focal Point for the United Nations Convention for Combating Desertification and incumbent of UNESCO Chair “Plant water relations in sand dunes”.
